There’s always a family story about crazy Uncle Eddie making a pool in the back of his pickup truck, or that Christmas Eve when Nan accidentally lit the drapes on fire with the waxy green candles. You know the ones. They’re the kind of stories that you all know and remember fondly for some reason or another, usually around a fire. Maybe they take a couple of drinks to come out. But someone always has a story like that, right? Like for instance, my Aunt Katy always loved telling stories about the old family cabin in Alaska, tucked between mountains. She liked to say those mountains could topple skyscrapers if they tried. Not that she had seen the place in years. She was technically my great aunt. But for hours she’d go on and on and on as if she had been just last week. Her face changed, lit up with a glow, like when you meet up with an old high school friend and settle into a different but more comfortable version of yourself.

She always had one story that she came back to, usually when she was a few drinks deep. She would huddle near the fireplace, or pacing the living room for her audience, but her favorite spot was curled up in the plush black recliner in the corner of my parents living room. Always clicking an empty wine glass with red acrylic fingernails. Tilting fingers rolled the stem of the wine glass. Relaxed. She usually had already told a few stories about the cabin. Maybe about the rope swing in the front, maybe about fishing in the lake the cabin hugged, maybe about the winter they accidentally got snowed in while visiting the cabin. It didn’t matter the path we took. We always ended up at the beer story.

My siblings and cousins crowded around her every time. All wanted to hang on every word and think about what the cabin would be like now, imagining them doing as she did. The older I got, the more predictable the story became. I was eventually finishing my own bottle of beer while she told the story.

By that time, I had it memorized to a T, but would still listen for the swell of nostalgia and the familiar smile in her eyes. It was like an inside joke. We all knew the story, but couldn’t piece it together and feel it. No one except Katy had seen the cabin at all in the last 30 years. She was the last one to see it. But as much as the beer story intrigued me, the cabin was always what caught my attention, drew me in, made me want to be in the moment with her. I wanted to stand as she did with the mountains at my back and the lake stretched in front of me, the sturdy logs of the cabin worn from the rugged Alaskan winters.

A six pack of beer. That was all it was, but it would go on it live in infamy in our family. The story had been stretched and changed over the years, going on to include more tall tales. Maybe Sammie had painted his face with the mud from the lake. Maybe he really did intentionally give up the lookout. Katy always speculated, trying to bring in another conspiracy every year.

Katy and her little brother Sammie were joined by Michael and Rosie, two of their cousins. She never told us how old she was at the time, but we all assumed it was one of the last times she was at the cabin and guessed she couldn’t have been older than 11 or 12. The oldest of the kids, she was in charge. They knew it was her plan. They already knew where six-pack would be resting on the counter in the tiny but cozy kitchen inside. And they had snagged them at the right moment, hoping to not be caught by Katy’s dad.

Huddled on the edge of the lake, they were hidden by the grassy knoll between the cabin’s front door and the bank. Katy’s eyes gleamed, I’m sure. The same way when she had all of our attention and told her stories. The other three stared at her anxiously. Sammie was elected to be the watch at the top of the little hill, to let them know if any of the parents were headed their way. He, of course, kicked the dry summer grass and pouted for being left out of the prank.

Rosie and Michael grabbed a bottle each. Katy struggled with the bottle opener, no bigger than one of her fingers. It was the first time she had used one, even though she had watched her parents use them hundreds of times before. A satisfying pop and the metal cap was off, centered in her small hand. A little toss and it sank to the bottom of the lake. She seemed to make it unclear over the years how far out it actually was from the bank.

Just as she began to raise the bottle--to her lips or over her head, it was never clear--the other two had begun to shake their bottles in impatience. Fascinated by the foaming anger inside the bottles, she changed her mind. Capping her hand over the top, she shook and shook and shook, the liquid frothing up through the cracks between the opening and her hand. She turned the bottle over, the foamed beer chugging out to meet the lake water. Rosie and Michael, in awe of the sticky and sickly foam, followed suit, struggling using the metal opener to pop their own tops and spray the beer into the lake water. Within minutes, all six bottles had been emptied into the lake. Sammie shrieked. Parents found them. Consequences were coming.

It was also never clear how severe the punishments doled out had actually been. Sometimes she said it was only been a slap on the wrist. Other times they had been sent to bed in the warm, homey cabin without dinner. It still didn’t seem like a punishment to me any way she swung it because every time, she was still there, at the cabin, surrounded by walls of memories.

The Christmas of my senior year of college was my breaking point. Aunt Katy, smooth as ever, lounged in the recliner, surveying the living room. Her face was calm but careening with the power she felt whenever she had the room’s full attention. Aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins; they all had ceased chatting in their own corners of the house, unaware of her need to capture everyone’s attention with her tales.

“Sammie!” Her voice broke through the brief silence. My uncle’s back had been turned to her. I knew he was hoping to get off the hook. He turned slowly, scratching the back of his neck and grimacing, although we all knew it was his attempt to smile at his big sister. He cleared his throat with a cough.

“Yeah Kate? Need something?”

She smiled. Not like the attempted smile he had given her. No. A smile that was clearly trying to split her face in two. Her pomegranate lips, stained with the same lipstick she wore every year, framed her white teeth. Green gemstones for eyes seemed ageless. Katy had the room’s full attention. It sickened me.

“Sammie dear, would you get me a glass of wine?” I could’ve sworn she hissed when she asked. I thought I heard a collective sigh went up through the room, at least by the adults. My younger cousins all scuttled in and shrieked in excitement, knowing it was time for a story. Sammie silently left the room to fetch his sister’s drink.

She told her story, same as always. I sat alone on the couch opposite her recliner, gulping down my drink in hopes the alcohol would help me stomach her dominance over the room. She told several stories, anything she could feed to everyone before she would reach the climax. Then she told the beer story. Again. I sat frustrated. Every year, every time I saw her, she had to tell that damned story. It was engaging as a kid, funny as a teenager, aggravating as an adult. She finished her story and her wine, giving leave to the audience she had forced to bend to her will. I stood up, my muscles tense from the strings of jealousy and annoyance weaving themselves through my body.

“Aunt Katy.” My voice came off cold and sharp. The room had nearly emptied. Everyone had left to fill their souls with sweets and snacks and other family yarns in the kitchen. She glanced up at me, an eyebrow cocked, a corner of her stained lips being pulled across her cheek in a smirk.

“Hey Josie. How’s it going? How’s your last year of college going?” She crooned at me, a bird preening its feathers in the face of another to prove their dominance. I refused to answer her. Awkwardly, I shifted my weight from foot to foot, hoping to stop the ground from slipping out from underneath me. Katy leaned back in the recliner, content with my discomfort. An acrylic nail traced the rim of the empty glass.

A few moments passed. She raised both eyebrows again at my refusal to speak to her. She thought she won, beat me to the Punch of Power and drank it all.

“Do you want to talk about it? You know, in my day college was--”

“Give me directions to the old family cabin.” I cut her off. She nearly dropped the delicate glass she had been toying with.

“The cabin? You mean the one from the stories?” Skepticism rained down. Something swelled inside of me. Jealousy. Frustration. Anything. All I could summon was a sharp nod.

Katy shifted in the recliner, her eyes breaking my gaze for the first time. Ever. “Well, honey, you know it’s been such a long time since I’ve been there. I don’t, I mean I’m not sure….” Her voice trailed off.

“Not sure of what? Where it is? Bullshit.” I had lost the last slivers of patience my temper had been restrained by.

She chewed on a stained lip, eyes clouding over. A switch flipped inside her. Her face hardened and she locked my gaze again, the green gemstones without their light. “Fine. I’ll write it down for you. Good luck finding it.”

I was surprised. It seemed too easy. She handed it over that easily. I snatched a post-it note and a pen from the coffee table near her chair and nearly threw them at her. I had to get it before she changed her mind.

She scribbled onto the note, grumbling about something under her breath. Shoving it in my hand, she walked out of the room without another word. She refused to speak to me, even look at me, for the rest of the evening. I believed I had won.

That summer I broke and my curiosity got the better of me. My parents’ house was quiet, no one was there, and Katy and I hadn’t spoken for months. She hadn’t even bothered to show up to my graduation. I convinced a couple of girlfriends after we graduated to join me for the road trip up to Alaska that swallowed a few days of our time. Music, laughter, fast food stops, we did it all. It was in agreement that the trip was needed after our busy senior year in college. None of us had decided on careers yet, so we dreamed up every scenario in the hours between our departure and destination. I didn’t care which one I chose. Maybe I would become a journalist, a writer, a historian, something that mattered, someone that found answers.

We made it to Anchorage just fine, and the morning of our first day I planned to find the storied cabin. They knew why I had wanted the trip and didn’t stir as I left the darkened hotel room. The worn roads were patched with thick veins of shiny new asphalt. My car bumped along the black path, jogging my memory. The earthquake a couple of months ago. Must’ve wrecked the roads.

Driving through town, my mind wandered, thinking of how my family might have spent their time decades ago. Maybe they went to that corner donut shop every Sunday. I imagined my grandparents there with Katy and Sammie[, crowded at the front glass case, sticky hands and pure smiles waiting for their favorite donut.

I peered at Katy’s slanted handwriting on the post-it note stuck to my dash, then at the GPS on my phone. A shaky convenient store taunted me on the edge of town. The beer story. I snickered to myself, thinking about the irony of having my own bottle of beer at the famed family cabin. I just couldn’t help myself. About $6 later I imagined sipping the drink in the sun, soaking in the mountains and the memories.

I got used to the bumpiness of the patched road and let my mind wander about the abandoned homestead. Aunt Katy had always described the log houses, patched together by rough hands and sweat. The swing in the front lawn was her favorite, made from the end of a log her grandfather had spare while building the cabin and an old rope. She’d talk about the glaring green roof and how it reflected the hours and hours of sunlight in the summer. Or how she gazed up at it after falling off the swing and scraping her knee, cheeks salty with tears but soothed by the fresh air. Peering out the windows of my car, I saw the mountains had grown. Angry cliff faces and snow embankments threatened to swallow me whole even from those heights.

“Arrived.” My GPS broke my thoughts. I was there.

The logs of the main cabin sagged, some split from rot and rough shakings from the earthquake. Garish green shards poked up from where the roof had once stood. The plastic had caved in at some point, leaving the skeleton of a cabin with no shelter from the punishing Alaskan winters. Gone was the sturdy pine that once was the home of the log swing that had seen scraped knees and sunsets and snowmen. In its place stood the mocking carcass of the tree trunk, gutted to the roots from whatever damned windstorm or aftershock or bough of snow had become too much for it to bear. Sharp but dead jagged edges proved the tree had fallen ages ago.

The sheer emptiness of the moment gripped my breath. Tears rolled down my cheeks. Moments of hoping to see strong but weathered walls, maybe even a broken beer bottle or two, disappeared. The stony sneers of the surrounding mountains laughed at my heartbreak. Bitter wind whipped through the valley.

Angry. I was beyond angry. Cheated. Definitely cheated. Who was I to be any less deserving of experiencing the memories? Jealous a bit too that my aunt had gotten to have the childhood moments there but not me. Had she known what had happened her? She must have. She did this on purpose. “Good luck finding it.” Her words rattled around in my mind, ringing in my ears.

I stormed back to my car and rummaged around for the warm six-pack. The bottles were projectiles, symbols of my outrage at being stiffed from the one story I wanted for myself. I smashed them, threw the brown bottles against the sagging wood, The satisfying explosions of the bottles settled into my bones, wrapping themselves around me, squeezing the breath out of my lungs. Five bottles lay in pieces, the beer pooling around the base of the ruins.

Snagging the sixth and final bottle from the flimsy cardboard, I raised it above my head, ready to finish off my anger. I let my arm drop. Shaking. Had to have been. I could smash it too. Everything inside me stood still. The creaking of rotting wood in the wind whispered to me, coaxed me to listen. I eavesdropped on the ripples of the lake, overheard the birds talking to each other, maybe about the weather. I smelled warm summer blackberries somewhere along the bank of the lake, and lavender springing up in the dry grass. The wind settled in the valley, bringing down the fresh air from the snow-capped mountains.

I used my car key to pop off the metal cap. I turned it over and over in my hand, letting the ridges prick my fingers. A swig. The sickly warm drink slithered down my throat. But I did it. Commemorated the moment, made it my own. I walked over to the edge of the lake and dumped the liquid into the cloudy water. It flowed down and out, never to be seen again.

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